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THE ORATION 

DELIVERED, JULY 2, 1893 

AT THE 

DEDICATION OF THE MONUMENT 

COMMEMORATIVE OF THE MEN OF NEW 

YORK WHO FELL AT GETTYSBURG 

JULY 2, 1863 



HENRY C. POTTER, D.D. 

BISHOP OF NEW YORK, AND SOMETIME CHAPLAIN 
24TH REGT., N. G. S. N. Y. 



PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE 

BOARD OF GETTYSBURG MONUMENTS COMMISSIONERS 

OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 



53 



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Oration 

BY 

RIGHT REV. HENRY C. POTTER. 

[delivered at GETTYSBURG JULY 2, 1 893.] 

THIRTY years ago to-day, these peaceful scenes 
were echoing with the roar and din of what a 
calm and unimpassioned historian, writing of it long 
years afterwards, described as the " greatest battlefield 
of the New World." Thirty years ago to-day the hearts 
of some thirty millions of people turned to this spot with 
various but eager emotions, and watched here the crash 
of two armies which gathered in their vast embrace the 
flower of a great people. Never, declared the seasoned 
soldiers who listened to the roar of the enemy's artillery, 
had they heard anything that was comparable with it.' 
Now and then it paused, as though the very throats of 
the mighty guns were tired, — but only for a little. Not 
for one day, nor for two, but for three raged the awful 
conflict, while the Republic gave its best life to redeem 
its honor, and the stain of all previous blundering and 

^ Life of Abraham Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay, vol. vii., page24I, 

3 



4 ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. 

faltering was washed white forever with the blood of its 
patriots and martyrs. 

How far away it all seems, as we stand here to-day ! 
How profound the contrast between those hours and 
days of bloodshed, and the still serenity of nature as it 
greets us now ! The graves that cluster round us here — 
the peaceful resting-places of a nation's heroes — are green 
and fair ; and, within them, they who fell here, after life's 
fierce and fitful fever, are sleeping well. 

And we are here to tell the world, to-day, that we have 
not forgotten them. It seems a tardy honor that we come 
to pay them, but through all the years that have come 
and gone we have kept their memories green. No single 
anniversary of their great achievement has returned that 
they who count its- chiefest honor that they may call these 
men brothers have not come here to bring their grateful 
homage, and to recite the splendid story of their splen- 
did deeds. Nay, more — in far-off towns and hamlets, 
north, and east, and west, in every home from which they 
came, no year has passed that ardent voices have not 
sung their valor and iron pens traced upon imperishable 
pages the story of their sacrifices. It is a long day, in- 
deed, from that in the year of our Lord, 1863, to this in 
1893 ; but if we seem to be late in raising here this monu- 
ment, you who behold it to-day will own that it is not 
unworthy of the men and the deeds that it commemorates. 



ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. 5 

I may not rehearse the story of those deeds, this 
afternoon. Already they have become a part of our com- 
mon heritage and have passed by a process of spiritual 
assimilation into the very fibre of the nation's life. There 
is no school-boy now who has not read the peerless and 
incomparable story — read it, and flushed and glowed with 
the fire of a passionate patriotism while he read it, — all 
the way along from that first moment when long before 
the dawn of July ist " Meade himself," as the historian 
has described him ' " came upon the field at i o'clock in 
the morning, a pale, tired-looking, hollow-eyed man, worn 
with toil and lack of sleep, with little of the conventional 
hero about him, but stout in heart and clear in mind," — 
on through that early morning when the heroic Reynolds, 
grasping the situation with a great commander's swift in- 
tuition, dashed along the Emmitsburg road to seize, if he 
might, the great opportunity that confronted him, and a 
little later was shot dead by a bullet through the brain, 
— on through that bloody morning and afternoon, when 
Hancock and Howard came, when Slocum seized and 
occupied his vantage ground, when our own Sickles, with 
his dusty and travel-stained veterans, came in haste from 
Emmitsburg and forced the fighting, — yes, on through 
all that memorable night that followed, and that knew 
no rest nor pause of hurrying battalions and tramp of 

' Life of Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay, vol. vii,, page 246. 



6 ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. 

armed men — on, till the morning dawned that ushered in 
this tremendous and never-to-be-forgotten day, — how 
well, now, we remember its incomparable story, and with 
awe and reverence recall it ! 

For here, friends and countrymen, the world witnessed 
a battlefield disfigured by no littleness and spoiled by 
no treachery. So long as the world lasts men will differ 
about the best strategy in war, and the schoolmen in 
arms will dispute concerning the wisdom of commanders, 
and the quality of their generalship. But though the 
critics may tell us what, in this or that emergency, might 
or might not have been done here thirty years ago, no criti- 
cism, however clever or hostile, can at all belittle that 
which was the one supreme splendor of this day and this 
field. Here the world saw a great army confronted with 
a great crisis and dealing with it in a great way. Here, 
for a time at any rate, all lesser jealousies and rivalries 
disappeared in the one supreme rivalry how each one 
should best serve his country and, if need be, die for her! 
Listen to the keynote of those great days as the general 
commanding himself struck it : 

" Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, 
June 30, 1863.— The commanding general requests that, 
previous to the engagement soon expected with the 
enemy, corps and other commanding officers will address 



ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. 7 

their troops, explaining to them briefly the immense 
issues involved in the struggle. The enemy are on our 
soil ; the whole country now looks anxiously to this army 
to deliver it from the presence of the foe ; our failure to 
do so will leave us no such welcome as the swelhng of 
millions of hearts with pride and joy at our success would 
give to every soldier of this army. Homes, firesides, 
domestic altars are involved. The army has fought 
well heretofore ; it is believed that it will fight more 
desperately and bravely than ever, if it is addressed in 
fitting terms. . . . 

•' By command of Major-General Meade. 
" S. Williams, Assistant Adj. Gen." ' 

Such words were not wasted. Whatever else was 
wanting, here were not wanting a high purpose, and 
heroic souls to follow it. 

And so as we come here to-day, my countrymen, we 
come, first of all, to honor that which in human nature 
is the best — unflinching courage, unfaltering sacrifice, 
and over all, a patriot's pure devotion to the right. Let 
no man say that in raising this monument to our dead 
heroes we are setting up one more altar wherewith to 
glorify the cruel god of war. There is, indeed, no one 
of us here, I am persuaded, who does not see in war and 

' See Greeley's The American Conflict, vol. ii., page 377. 



8 ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. 

its attendant train of evils and horrors, that of which 
any man or nation may wisely be in dread. There is 
no one of us here, I am no less persuaded, who, listening 
to that blatant jingoism that, from some safe retreat, 
from time to time shoots its envenomed fang of swagger 
and of hate to inflame, if it may, a great people to some 
silly deed of arms alike unworthy of its power and its en- 
lightenment — there is no one of us, I say, who listening to 
such foolish talk does not hear it with equal amusement 
and contempt. But, all the same, we may not forget 
that there may come in the history of every nation 
emergencies when all the resources of diplomacy and 
all the cleverness of statesmanship having been exhausted, 
there remains no other arbitrament but the sword, no 
last court of appeal, but to arms. And surely we who 
have lived, as have many of us here, through that mem- 
orable era which preceded the struggle which we are here 
to-day to commemorate, can never forget that there were 
ideas which were at war, first of all ; and that the life of 
this Republic was bound up with the triumph of those 
ideas for which this battlefield must for ever stand — yes, 
their triumph, peacefully if it might be, but with sword, 
and shot, and shell, if it must be. 

Believe me, my countrymen, we need to remember this ! 
Into this sacred and august presence — the presence both 
of the dead and of the living, — and amid these gracious 



ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. 9 

and tender ceremonies, I would not introduce one dis- 
cordant note. It is well that as the years go by the 
rancors that once divided children of the same republic 
should be forgiven and forgotten. But there are other 
things that may not be forgotten, and it is at our peril 
that we forget them. We may never forget that the 
struggle of which these graves are the witnesses was 
a struggle for the eternal righteousness. We may never 
forget that the cause which was substantially decided 
here was the cause of freedom, and justice, and the ever- 
lasting equities, as against a despotism, which, however 
amiable its ordinary exhibitions, had in it, as Sumner 
said of it, the essence of that "crime that degrades men." 
We may never forget that, behind the cause of the 
Union, was the cause of unpaid labor, of bartered man- 
hood, of a trafific which dealt in human hearts. We may 
never forget that the greatest victory in the war of the 
Rebellion was the triumph of great principles. And, 
above all, we may never forget that a nation which has 
won its freedom from dishonor with a great price, can 
only maintain' that freedom by struggles and sacrifices 
equally great. These halcyon seas on which we float— O 
my countrymen, they are not always friendly to a nation's 
best well-being. The institutions which, at such cost, we 
have rescued from disintegration and ruin, will not long 
survive unless you and I are concerned as to those 



lo ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. 

foundations on which they rest, and unless, above all, we 
watch with jealous eye whatever alien hand would abuse 
or pervert them. It was the tragedy of that struggle 
which we are here to-day to remember, that it was an 
internecine struggle. They were of ourselves who lifted 
the flag of revolt and disowned the authority of the 
government ; and it may be — alas only lately we have 
been reminded how easily ! — that those in high places 
shall even be the apologists of the red flag of anarchy 
and of the red hands of its ensanguined followers. This 
day, this service, and most of all these our heroic dead, 
stand — let us here swear never to forget it — for the 
sanctity of law, for the enduring supremacy of just and 
equitable government, and so for the liberties of a law- 
abiding people ! 

In their honor we come here, my brothers, to con- 
secrate this monumental shaft. What, now, is that one 
feature in this occasion which lends to it its supreme and 
most pathetic interest ? There are other monuments in 
this city of a nation's dead, distinguished as these graves 
that lie about us here can never be. There are the tombs 
and memorials of heroes whose names are blazoned upon 
them, and whose kindred and friends as they have stood 
round them have repeopled this scene with their vanished 
forms, have recalled their lineaments, have recited their 
deeds, and have stood in tender homage around forms 



ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. n 

which were once to them a living joy and presence. But 
for us to-day there is no such privilege, no such tender 
individuality of grief. These are our unknown dead. 
Out of whatever homes they came we cannot tell. 
What were their names, their lineage, their human mien 
and aspect, of this no less we are ignorant. One thing 
only we know. They wore our uniform. In one form 
or another, by cap, or sleeve, or weapon — somewhere 
upon the scarred and mutilated forms that once lay 
dying or dead within sight of these historic hills there 
was the token of that Empire State whence they had 
come— whence we have come, and that makes them and 
us, in the bond of that dear and noble commonwealth, 
forever brothers. And that is enough for us. We need 
to know no more. From the banks of the Hudson 
and the St. Lawrence, from the wilds of the Catskills 
and the Adirondacks, from the salt shores of Long Island, 
and from the fresh lakes of Geneva and Onondaga and 
their peers, from the forge and the farm, the shop and 
the factory, from college halls and crowded tenements, 
all alike, they came here and fought and fell— and shall 
never, never be forgotten ! Our great unknown defenders. 
Ah, my countrymen, here we touch the foundations of 
a people's safety— of a nation's greatness ! We are wont 
to talk much of the world's need of great leaders, and 
their proverb is often on our lips who said of old, " Woe 



12 ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. 

unto the land whose king is a child." Yes, verily, that 
is a dreary outlook for any people when among her sons 
there is none worthy to lead her armies, to guide her 
counsels, to interpret her laws, or to administer them. But 
that is a still drearier outlook when in any nation, however 
wise her rulers and noble and heroic her commanders, 
there is no greatness in the people equal to a great vision 
in an emergency, and with a great courage with which 
to seize it. And that, I maintain, was the supreme glory 
of the heroes whom we commemorate to-day. Do you 
tell me that they were unknown — that they commanded 
no battalions, determined no policies, sat in no military 
councils, rode at the head of no regiments? Be it so! 
All the more are they the fitting representatives of you 
and me — the people. Never in all history, I venture 
to affirm, was there a war whose aims, whose policy, 
whose sacrifices were so absolutely determined by the 
people, that great body of the unknown, in which, after 
all, lay the strength and the power of the Republic. 
When some one reproached Lincoln for the seeming 
hesitancy of his policy, he answered — great seer as well 
as great soul that he was — " I stand for the people. I 
am going just as fast and as far as I can feel them 
behind me ! " 

And so, as we come here to-day and plant this column, 
consecrating it to its enduring dignity and honor as the 



ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. 13 

memorial of our unknown dead, we are doing, as I cannot 
but think, the fittest possible deed that we could do. 
These unknown that lie about us, here ! Ah ! what are 
they but the peerless representatives, elect forever by the 
deadly gage of battle, of those 60,000,000 of people, as 
to-day they are, whose rights and liberties they achieved ! 
Unknown to us are their names, — unknown to them was 
the greatness and the glory of their deeds ! And is not 
this, brothers of New York, the story of the world's best 
manhood, and of its best achievement ? The work by the 
great unknown, for the great unknown — the work that, 
by fidelity in the ranks, courage in the trenches, obedi- 
ence to the voice of command, patience at the picket- 
line, vigilance at the outpost, is done by that great host 
that bear no splendid insignia of rank, and figure in no 
commander's despatches, this work, with its largest and 
incalculable and unforeseen consequences, for a whole 
people, — is not this work, which we are here to-day to 
commemorate, at once the noblest and most vast ? Who 
can tell us, now, the names, even, of those that sleep 
about us here, and who of them could guess on that 
eventful day when here they gave their lives for duty 
and their country, how great and how far-reaching would 
be the victory they should win ? 

And thus we learn, my brothers, where a nation's 
strength resides. When the German Emperor, after the 



14 ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. 

Franco-Prussian War, was crowned in the Salles des 
Glaces at Versailles, on the ceiling of the great hall in 
which that memorable ceremony took place, there were 
inscribed the words : " The King Rules by His Own 
Authority." "Not so," said that grand man of blood 
and iron who, most of all, had welded Germany into one 
mighty people — " not so ; ' the Kings of the earth shall 
rule under me, saith the Lord.' Trusting in the tried 
love of the whole people, we leave the country's future 
in God's hands ! " Ah, my countrymen, it was not this 
man or that man that saved our Republic in its hour of 
supreme peril. Let us not, indeed, forget her great 
leaders, great generals, great statesmen, and greatest 
among them all, her great martyr and President, Lincoln. 
But there was no one of these then who would not have 
told us that which we may all see so plainly now, that it 
was not they who saved the country, but the host of 
her great unknown. These, with their steadfast loyalty, 
these with their cheerful sacrifices, and these, most of all 
with their simple faith in God and in the triumph of His 
right — these they were who saved us I Let us never 
cease to honor them, and to trust them ; and let us see 
to it that neither we nor they shall ever cease to trust in 
that overarching Providence that all along has led them. 
This field, you know, was not the field originally chosen 
by Meade and his lieutenants whereon to fight this 



ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. 15 

battle. The historian whom I have already quoted tells 
us that '' while Meade was sending his advance to occupy 
Gettysburg, it was with no thought of fighting there. It 
seemed to him merely a point from which to observe and 
occupy the enemy's advance and mask his own move- 
ment to what seemed to him a better line in the rear." 
" But in spite of these prudent intentions . . . two 
formidable armies were approaching each other at their 
utmost speed, all through the 30th of June, driven by 
the irresistible laws of human action — or, let us rever- 
ently say, by the hand of Providence." ' Yes, by the 
hand of Providence. " Trusting in the tried love of the 
whole people," said Bismarck, " we leave the country's 
future " in the people's hands ? Nay, but " in God's 
hands ! " " If I did not believe," said this great leader 
of his time, "'in the divine government of the world, 
I would not serve my country another hour. Take my 
faith from me, and you take my country too ! " Preg- 
nant words, not alone for these times, but for all times. 
It was God in the people that made the heroism which, 
in these unknown ones, we are here to-day to honor. 
It must be forever, God in and with the people that 
shall make the nation great and wise and strong for any 
great emergency. 

In that faith, men and brethren, we come here to rear 

' Nicolay and Hay's Life of Lincoln, vol. vii., pp. 234, 236. 



1 6 ORATION AT GETTYSBURG. 

this monument and to lay the tribute of our love and 
gratitude upon these graves. May no alien nor vandal 
hand ever profane their grand repose who slumber here ! 
And when the sons of freedom, now unborn, through 
generations to come, shall gather here to sing again the 
praises of these unknown martyrs for the flag, may they 
kneel down beside these graves and swear anew allegi- 
ance to their God, their country, and the right ! 



